Welcome to Winchester Poetry Festival
Winchester Poetry Festival is planned for Oct 2027
Performance Hall, Winchester Discovery Centre
Free but donations welcome
Learning Rooms, Winchester Discovery Centre
£20.00 (places limited)
About this event
These lectures are given every year in honour of the poet and scholar F. T. Prince, who was one of Southampton’s first English professors. Invited speakers explore new directions in literary studies, drawing on the English department’s wide range of intellectual interests.
Previous speakers have included Daljit Nagra, Mary Jean Chan, Christopher Ricks, Anthony Joseph, Simon Gikandi, Tjawangwa Dema, Malika Booker, Andrew McMillan, Isobel Armstrong and Anthony Joseph,
Tuesday 27 October 2026 | 6:00pm
University of Southampton (Avenue Campus)
Southampton SO17 1BF
AND online
RSVP
Guests can join this event in person at Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, or online.
We encourage guests who wish to join in person to register at your earliest opportunity as spaces are strictly limited.
14th Annual F.T.Prince Memorial lecture
The School of Humanities is pleased to invite you to the 14th annual F. T. Prince Memorial Lecture, which will take place on Tuesday 27 October 2026 at 18:00 on the University of Southampton’s Avenue Campus.
For this year’s FT Prince Memorial Lecture, the Department of English at the University of Southampton is delighted to welcome Denise Riley. The lecture is entitled 'Does The Poem Think?'
Denise Riley is one of the most important poets at work in the English language.
“On skulls, poems, bones, and spirits.
The poets invoked will included Byron, Wordsworth, and a number of twentieth century and contemporary authors.”
She will be in conversation with Toby Litt, Associate Professor in Creative Writing.
About the speaker
Denise Riley was born in 1948 and lives in London. She previously taught at the University of East Anglia. Her prose books include War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983), ‘Am I That Name?’ Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History (1988), The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000), The Force of Language (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle; 2004), Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005), Time Lived, Without Its Flow (2012; revised edition 2019) and A Chorus of Ears: On the ‘Voice of the Poem’, 2026. Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977), Dry Air (1985), Mop Mop Georgette (1993), Penguin Modern Poets series 2, vol 10 (with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair; 1996), Selected Poems (2000, revised 2019), Say Something Back (2016), Penguin Modern Poets series 3, vol 6 (with Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine; 2017), Lurex (2022)
About the F. T. Prince Lecture
This annual lecture series takes place in honour of the poet and scholar F. T. Prince, who was one of Southampton's first English professors. Invited speakers explore new directions in literary studies, drawing on the English department's wide range of intellectual interests.
This event is co-organised by the University of Southampton English department and the Winchester Poetry Festival.
Event Information
Guests can join this event in person at Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, or online. Please select your ticket choice when booking.
We encourage guests who wish to join in person to register at your earliest opportunity as spaces are strictly limited.